Underfire Republican Vivek Ramaswamy doubles down on 9/11 'inside job' claim

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is facing backlash after insisting that 9/11 was an inside job.

In a profile published Monday in The Atlantic, Ramaswamy began spouting conspiracy theories after reporter John Hendrickson asked him what the “truth” about the January 6 insurrection is. Instead of directly answering the question, Ramaswamy instead decided to talk about 9/11 and said he wondered how many federal agents “were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers.”

Later on Monday night Ramaswamy appeared on CNN and doubled down on his false claims about the terrorist attacks, saying: “Our government, for 20 years, lied to the American people about it. That is hard fact, actually.”

When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pointed out that the official 9/11 commission, published in 2004, found zero evidence of a US government plot, Ramaswamy replied with: “Yes, and it lied. And it was false.”

After the interview, Ramaswamy took to Twitter to call the interview “hilarious”, and said that “the TRUTH is a hard pill for CNN and the bipartisan establishment to swallow.”

Despite his insistence that the American people were lied to about 9/11, he also insisted that he had been misquoted in The Atlantic profile by Hendrickson. The next night, CNN played an audio clip debunking Ramaswamy’s claim that he had been misquoted.

This isn’t the first conspiracy theory Ramaswamy has promoted. He recently said that diversity, equality, and inclusion (or “DEI”) is to blame for the Maui wildfires.

Last Thursday, Ramaswamy tweeted about the devastating wildfires, saying that water for firefighting was being “delayed” by an official who “is an Obama Foundation "Asia Pacific Leader" & a climate activist who believes water should be “revered” first and foremost. The DEI agenda is literally costing people their lives.”

According to FiveThirtyEight, Ramaswamy is third in favourability polls out of Republican candidates, with a rating of 8.9 per cent ahead of Wednesday night’s debate.

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